Treacle Pudding

Am I jumping the gun a bit posting a recipe for treacle pudding? It’s not really cold enough yet or dark enough and with the twinkling lights and festive cheer, winter gloom hasn’t quite set in. Does it count that I made this last month and that I found it perfectly fitting to eat the deepest winter comfort food on a dreary November evening? Does it help that I’ve heard the temperature is about to drop? Or, how about this one – is there really a wrong time for treacle pudding?

There’s a bit of irony about this recipe. I had been looking online and in my British cookbooks for authentic treacle pudding that actually contained treacle and I was surprised to find that in fact, they were hard to come by. And the funny thing is I found a very good recipe, containing a good amount of treacle in my Australian Family Circle Puddings bible, ahem, sorry book. I made this recipe with a degree of caution, as there is no suet to keep it light, but I was really pleased to discover that this pudding came out light and spongy and syrupy. We ate the whole thing over the course of a few days and it never got at all rubbery.

In the photos of this king of puddings, it looks as though I’ve got my camera on soft-focus, which amused me. It was in fact just a dirty lens – so my apologies for the misty-eyed perspective. If you don’t have a purpose-built pudding basin, use a ceramic or Pyrex bowl and simply tie a tea-towel or secure some foil over the top.

Method:
Grease a 1.5L pudding basin and put a little circle of baking paper in the bottom.
Place a saucer upside down in the bottom of a large pot, half fill with water and bring to the boil while you make the pudding. The saucer acts like a buffer between the hot bottom and the pudding.
Pour 2 tbs of golden syrup and 1 tbs of treacle into the bottom of the pudding basin.
Cream butter, sugar and vanilla with a mixer.
Add eggs, flours, 1 tbs of treacle and mix until just combined. If you over mix at this stage, you’ll get a rubbery pud.
Pour the mixture into the pudding basin and cover tightly with a lid, foil, baking paper or a tea-towel. You could use string to secure.
Place into the boiling water, carefully – perhaps turns the heat off while you lower in the pudding.
Ensure the water comes up to about half way, and then boil for 2 hours, topping up with hot water from the kettle when necessary.
After 2 hrs, turn the heat off and let everything cool down a little before you lift the pudding out. Take care not to burn yourself.
Lift the lid off, turn the pudding onto a plate and serve.
Heat up the remaining treacle and golden syrup and drizzle over. Serve with hot custard and whipped cream.